Evolutionary Game Theory on Complex Networks--|the Effect of Community Structure and Topological Heterogeneity - Essay Example

Moreover, with the increase of Q and , the ability of network to maintain the cooperator frequency become weaker, which indicate the sensitivity of evolutionary prisoners dilemma game to the network topology. The study of complex networks, including technological, social and biological networks of various kinds, has attracted much attention in resent years. [1-4]. Furthermore, how the properties of networks, such as the community structure, the topological heterogeneity and so on, affect the dynamical processes taking place upon the networks, has been one of the hottest topics in the literature.

[5-12] This article will investigate the Evolutionary Prisoners Dilemma [13-17] on various strength (noted by Q and) of community structure and the topological heterogeneity upon scale-free complex networks. As a standard model for investigating the selfish behavior on the confrontation between cooperation and defection, the tool of Evolutionary Prisoners Dilemma has its remarkable value on economy, sociology and other related fields. Researchers have studied the Evolutionary Prisoners Dilemma on Random Graph and on Small-World networks [18-19] and pointed out that the scale-free topology will provide the emergence of cooperation [20].

In other words, the scale-free topology has strong ability to maintain the cooperator frequency in a relatively high rate. However, from present investigation, when taking the community structure and the topological heterogeneity into consideration, the ability of maintaining the cooperator frequency will be weaken as Q and increase, which is discussed below. The model of Evolutionary Game Theory is defined by a system of N players arranged at the nodes of a network. Each player can independently choose either one of the two strategies: to be a cooperator or be a defector.

In this article, common practice is followed [21] and the game is rescaled, assuming that s = p = 0, r = 1 and t =b, which b ranging from 1 to